Noel Dennehy, the head chef at The Moorings in Portmagee in Kerry uses fresh fish caught daily along with Daly’s Smoked Salmon, Cromane Mussels and Skellig Crab Claws.

Serves 4

4 x 200g Portmagee Hake Fillets
Sea salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
80g Daly’s Smoked Salmon
3 spring onions
320g hot mashed potato
20 fresh Cromane Mussels
1 tablespoon of butter
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
50ml white wine
100ml cream
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tablespoon chives, finely chopped
12 Skellig Crab Claws, cooked

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Season the hake with sea salt. Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a nonstick frying pan with an ovenproof handle. Add the hake, skin-side down first, and fry for 1 minute. Turn the fish over gently, then cook for 1 minute more before placing the pan in the oven for five minutes.

2. Slice the smoked salmon and spring onion finely and stir into the hot mashed potato. Keep warm.

3. Sauté the mussels in a tablespoon of butter with the shallot and garlic for 1 minute. Add the white wine and reduce by half. Add the cream and cook for 1 minute. Add the lemon juice and chives and stir. Add the cooked crab claws and cook for 1-2 minutes until heated through.

4. Divide the potato between four warm plates. On each plate, place a fillet of hake with 3 crab claws and 5 mussels. Drizzle any sauce from the pan around the fish and serve immediately.

 

“The seafood, as I say, is as fresh as it can be and tastes all the better for being consumed as you watch the sun go down over the harbour… A piece of John Dory, straight off the boat a few minutes before hitting the table, was predictably glorious… How the chef managed to get the crab meat to cohere and remain so ethereally light, I just don’t know. But they were like light, crabby clouds.”   Tom Doorley on his meal at The Moorings in Portmagee, in the Restaurant section of the Weekend Irish Times